More than 30 years ago, David Wilkerson shared an amazing prophetic word with my friend Mike Evans, who happened upon it only recently. Mike told me he picked up his Bible one day, and a handwritten note about his conversation with the late evangelist David Wilkerson fell out. The message it contained shook Mike to his knees.
The handwritten note was from a meeting Mike had with Wilkerson at the Embassy Suites near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in 1986.
It was a prophetic word Wilkerson gave Mike, who wrote it down and stuck it in the Bible he used at the time. It stayed there until Mike found it not long ago. The prophecy said: “I see a plague coming on the world and the bars, church and government shut down. The plague will hit New York City and shake it like it has never been shaken. The plague is going to force prayerless believers into radical prayer, into their Bibles, and repentance will be the cry from true men of God in the pulpit. And out of it will come a third Great Awakening that will sweep America and the world.”
How could something so terrible lead to an awakening of that magnitude? Mike said this is how God often works. The first two Great Awakenings came around times of hardship.
“The two Great Awakenings that America has [had that shook] the entire nation happened around the time of the American Revolution and the Civil War,” he said. “The pilgrims came to this country on fire for God, but their children didn’t. Their children became cold in their souls. And America started pushing away. And then all of a sudden, here comes this manifested Great Awakening that shook the nation. And then you had the American Revolution. You had another one, and you had the Civil War. And I thought, ‘Wow, [Wilkerson] said there’s going to be a third Great Awakening.'”
Could it be that this COVID-19 pandemic we’re experiencing is the trial that will usher in the next Great Awakening?
Outside certain Christian circles, few pay much attention to prophecy, but these times are different. Even Fox News reported in March 2020 on a prophecy from rising prophetic voice Shawn Bolz, who said at the time that the Lord had shown him the end of the coronavirus.
Shawn’s prophecy had two major points. The first is that the enemy will flee as the church rises up. God has called the church to respond to COVID-19, not sit back passively and merely let it happen. “God’s going to turn the tide of this thing,” he said.
The second point is that millions will not die from this. “I prophesied that this will not become a pandemic with pandemonium and millions dying,” he said. “Tens of millions won’t die worldwide, and millions won’t die in America.”
But how will this pandemic affect the church? Shawn believes it will only serve to give the church greater ground.
“The church has been last in line [in the media space],” he told me. “And God wants to give the church media space and social media space and internet real estate. That’s just as important as their natural places they meet in. This is a training ground right now for the church to respond.”
“It’s a preparation for an entire revival that we would have all of our technology in order and the practice that we need because God’s going to bring half of the revival—it’s going to happen virtually,” he said.
That’s encouraging, but what are other prophetic voices saying? From his powerful new book, The Passover Prophecies, well-respected prophet and friend Chuck D. Pierce states that as of late August 2019 the church has entered a “Passover decade,” which will test the world and the church like no time in recent memory. In fact, in September 2019 the Lord spoke to Pierce, saying that starting in early 2020:
“This will be a year that plague-like conditions will infiltrate the earth. This Passover will be a modern-day Passover like the initial Passover where My people were redeemed from Egypt. If a remnant in a nation will celebrate My blood and press through after Passover for the next forty days, I will restore, remake, realign, reset and recalibrate their future! This will be a year that I begin the process of separating and dividing nations that belong to Me. This division will start at Passover and then continue through the decade.”
I’m so grateful for people such as Shawn and Chuck, who are standing up and speaking prophetically despite the media’s contrary narrative. I only hope that the church will choose to heed these godly prophets instead of the media, which seem to have a different agenda. {eoa}
This article was excerpted from Chapter 8 of God, Trump and COVID-19: What Is God Saying to His Prophets? (Charisma House, 2020).
Billy Hallowell 
James Lasher